According to a Nov. 30 Justice Department report, the number of inmates in U.S. prisons rose 35 percent from 1995 to 2005. By the end of 2005, nearly 2.2 million people were locked up in U.S. jails and prisons.
The United States has the largest prison population and imprisons the largest percentage of its citizens in the world.
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The overall U.S. incarceration rate is 25 percent higher than that of any other nation in the world, according to the Sentencing Project, a prisoner advocacy group.
Other developed capitalist countries have far lower incarceration rates: 141 per 100,000 people in Britain, 85 per 100,000 in France, and 62 per 100,000 in Japan. The worldwide average incarceration rate is only 80 per 100,000 people. (World Prison Brief, 2006)
The working class—especially workers from nationally oppressed backgrounds—suffer the most under the U.S. prison system. African Americans and Latinos make up nearly 60 percent of prison inmates—40 percent and 20 percent, respectively—and whites are 35 percent.
Prison population rises
From 1960 through the mid-1970s, the prison population ranged from 200,000 to 215,000—one-tenth of what it is today. But by the late 1970s, the high-tech revolution and declining profitability of U.S. industry saw the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. A shift from manufacturing to low-wage service jobs domestically had begun.
The trend toward outsourcing higher-paying jobs to low-wage countries has increased unemployment for U.S. workers. Internally, the outsourcing of jobs to prisons has contributed to a similar phenomenon. The creation of the prison-industrial complex has led to the replacement of decent paying jobs by a new kind of semi-slavery.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, $9 billion was spent on jails and prisons in 1982 compared to $57 billion in 2001, a staggering 530 percent increase. Spending on law enforcement jumped from $19 billion in 1982 to $72 billion in 2001, a 280 percent increase.
At the same time, the number of people in prison rose dramatically. People in the prison system, meaning those in prison, on parole or on probation, more than doubled from the 1960s to 1980.
In 1980, the number of people in prison or jail totaled 503,000. By 1990, this high number had doubled to over 1 million. By mid-2002, the number had doubled again to over 2 million.
This is no mistake. The criminalizing of a large section of the working population serves certain class interests. The spending increases for prisons and cops bolster the repressive capitalist state apparatus. They also translate into far less money allocated to meet social needs such as education and housing.
While the federal government cut its contribution to education by 25 percent in the last 10 years, it increased spending on “criminal justice” by 29 percent. The so-called “War on Drugs” received $12 billion alone in 1990.
More women and immigrants in prison
The fastest-growing segment of the population being incarcerated is women. Working-class women now make up
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The number of women prisoners rose 4 percent from 2003 to 2004—more than twice the rate of increase among men. From 1994 to 2004, the annual rate of increase in incarceration of women averaged 4.8 percent, compared to an average of 3.1 percent for men.
Women now account for one in four people arrested in the United States.
The highest historical increase in incarceration rates overall has been for immigration offenses. Arrests have risen a whopping 394 percent since 1995.
The number of persons jailed in federal prison for immigration offenses essentially doubled from 1,593 in 1985 to 3,420 in 1995. After implementation of the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,” signed by former president Bill Clinton in 1996, the number of immigrants incarcerated skyrocketed to 16,903 by 2003. Mexican and Central American immigrants are the most affected.
Devastating impact on oppressed communities
The impact of the prison system on the Black community in particular is devastating. In 2005, 8 percent of African American men between the ages of 25 and 29 were in prison, according to a November 2006 Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin. By contrast, 1.1 percent of white men of the same age group were incarcerated.
The same report shows that African American women do not fare much better. They are three times more likely than white women to enter the prison system.
The overall incarceration rate of African Americans more than tripled between 1980 and 1999.
And millions of African Americans have been disenfranchised by being denied the right to vote in 48 states as a result of their convictions.
Latinos also are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates. Latinos are 14 percent of the U.S. population, but they make up 29 percent of the prison population. Nearly 3 percent of all Latino males 25-29 years old are in prison.
Native Americans bear the brunt of the prison system’s racism and oppression, as well. The U.S. Department of Justice reported in 1999 that one in every 25 Native adults is in the prison system.
These incarceration rates severely impact oppressed communities. The significant absence of family members places untold burdens on other family members and the communities to which they belong.
Moreover, prisons are often hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles from the homes of the incarcerated, making it nearly impossible for family members to see each other.
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Driven by capitalist greed
This tremendous rise in the prison population comes at a time when the bourgeoisie says that crime is decreasing. So, why is the prison-industrial complex a booming industry? Who benefits from the incarceration of millions?
Marxists understand that the components of the U.S. criminal justice system—the prisons, the jails, and the courts—are integral parts of the capitalist state apparatus. The state serves as a means of ruling-class repression against the workers and unemployed.
The ruling class also uses the prison system to control the increasing numbers of working poor and unemployed following the high-tech revolution and decline of U.S. industry. While prisoners, for the most part, do not compete directly with workers who are not incarcerated, the prison system acts as a whip for the unemployed, compelling people to accept whatever income they can find.
But in the end, the confinement of workers and the most oppressed will lead to unity of purpose and organization behind prison walls. Through working-class unity and struggle, both inside and outside of prison, the workers can achieve revolutionary consciousness, tear down the prison walls and create a system in which workers wield power over all aspects of the state.
